Chapter One
Elizabeth Bishop, Travel and Transgression
Every continent has its own great spirit of place.
Every people is polarized in some particular locality, which is home, the homeland. Different places on the face of the earth have different vital effluence, different vibration, different chemical exhalation, different polarity with different stars:
call it what you like. But the spirit of place is a great vitality.1
D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature
In my introduction, I propose to investigate into Bishop’s writing from her position as a traveler, who projects an objective and non-judgmental consciousness to highlight the significant subject of Other in her works. In so doing, her poems are profoundly fraught with implicit ideologies of rebellion and transgression against monolithic authority and rigid hierarchy; her purpose is not to eradicate the dignity and status of Other, but to endorse and affirm the subjectivity of Other. Thus, we realize that Bishop as a traveler doesn’t attempt to impose the egoistic judgments on the location where she reaches. Since traveling can enable us to move beyond the boundary freely, Caren Kaplan in her Questions of Travel provides us with a
perspective to think about the modernist form of exile and expatriatism which fall into the category of modernism displacement.2 She claims the modernism form of
1 Lawrence, D.H.. “The Spirit of Place.” Studies in Classic American Literature. Ed. Ezra Greespan, Lindeth Vasey and Jogn Worthen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 7-55.
2 In Questions of Travel, Caren Kaplan quotes from Bishop’s “One Art ” and examines Bishop’s rootless traveler identity. In this book she further applies the metaphors of travel to find its connections with the blurring of differences and identities based on genders, races, and nations…etc. She claims these identities cling to us and make us who we are.
displacement can be regarded as a means to free itself from any political and historical agendas and specificities “ in order to generate aesthetic categories and ahistorical values.” Kaplan proposes that this form of displacement is more concerned about
“aesthetic gain” (28). Accordingly, Bishop herself falls into the category of modernism form of exile because she realizes the aesthetic of being a conscious traveler whose main concern of engaging with traveling doesn’t originate from any political enforcement, but personal willingness and fulfillment.
Since Bishop’s traveling originates from a personal choice which accounts for her expectations towards a new location, the correlation between the act of travel and the discovery of a new place can be inextricably interactive. As a traveler ventures to a new location, the act of traveling can have a prominent impact on shaping the travelers’ vision and attitude. In “ State of Becoming,” Piaras Mac Éinrí points out that the dealing with otherness, for example in the act of traveling, can help us to recognize “ the self in the other and the other in the self.”3 He further comments that none of us can be “ entirely fixed in our subjectivity.” As we can see, the traveling location possesses an extreme power to influence our way of perceiving. To explicate the prevalent impact of traveling on people’s mind and sensation, Lionel Cantu also quotes Hector Manuel Romeo’s perspective on tourism:
Tourism has its place, a place that is characterized by its diversification, for it is indifferent to nothing and affects all, the local as much as the foreign….And that does not refer only to foreign tourism, those visitors from afar who discover new realities, even as they offer them. (154) In this sense, through traveling a traveler like Bishop can experience and get more exposed to excessive experiences of exoticism and displacement inasmuch as she
3 Éinrí, Piaras Ma. “ States of Becoming: Is there a ‘here’ here and a ‘there’ there? ” Available at <
http://migration.ucc.ie/statesofbecoming.htm >. In this article, the writer reflects on the issues of displacement, a sense of belonging and identity.
retains the capacity to traverse the border and boundary. While traveling, travelers can also cross the borders of restrictions. Cantu also argues that traveling can also be regarded as “ a response to one’s marginality.” He further advocates that homosexuals, for example, can temporarily “escape their marginalized status by traveling to other cities and countries” (161).4 Explicitly, Cantu argues traveling can help those sexual or ideological dissidents to escape the constraints of marginality at home. I find Cantu’s argument perfectly applies to Bishop’s identity as a traveler, for she is a lesbian and an ideological transgressor whose traveling can be seen as an aesthetic pursuit of her art as well as an escape from the oppression and restriction at home.
Different from those colonists whose objectives of voyages are primarily aiming at subjugating and emasculating the diversity and difference within their new destination, travelers journey to other cities and countries to temporarily escape their
“marginalized” status and take in new elements of sensation.
In this process, travelers reach for the dynamics of tourism and diverse locations, which liberalize their mindscape and help them discard oppressive
restrictions. To understand the different position between being a traveler and colonist, we can have insight into the correlation between otherness and colonialism in terms of what Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has attempted to account for concerning otherness in relation to colonialism. Spivak comments on, “ the remotely orchestrated, far-flung and heterogeneous project to constitute the colonial subject as Other. This project is also the asymmetrical obliterating of the trace of that Other in its precarious
subjectivity” ( 266).5 Instead of being a colonist who aspires for the thrill of
4 In “De Ambiente: Queer Tourism and the Shifting Boundaries of Mexican Male Sexualities,” Lionel Cantu examines the rise of gay and lesbian tourism in Mexico where many homosexual foreigners have come to seek new sensations. The dynamics an fascination of Mexican queer tourism provides foreign tourists with its accessibility.
5 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999.
dominance, Bishop expresses herself as a liberal-minded traveler who embraces and celebrates diversity and shows enthusiasm for taking in the limitless vision and
knowledge provided by heterogeneous cultures. Before we plunge into her work, it is more important for us to initially have a general understanding of Bishop’s biography, which I believe has urged Bishop to step on the road of personal search and journey.
Bishop’s childhood and Loss
During her life, Elizabeth Bishop produced a huge number of letters and poems, which help us to get acquainted with the poet and her captivating forms of artistic expression. To honor this writer of eminent distinction, Robert Lowell once proclaimed, “ she will be recognized as not only one of the best, but also one of the most prolific writer of our century.” However, Bishop’s life seems not as fortunate as her artistic achievement has been recognized; early in her life she became an orphan.
In One Art, Robert Giroux offers us insight into Bishop’s biography which helps us to grasp the poet’s indelible trauma and her secret subjectivity. When she was nearly eight months old, her father died. Unable to accept the debilitating news, Bishop’s mother was grieved and devastated by the shock of her husband’s sudden departure and failed to recover her mental health; she was later sent to an asylum and eventually died there. After five, Bishop never saw her mother again (5~11).6 At the early stage of Bishop’s life, the family was traumatized by the gloomy and melancholic
atmosphere of sadness and loss because of these tragedies. The echo of the past grief reverberated in her mind even after she had grown up.
While composing “ In the Village,” Bishop draws on the description of her mother’s mental disease, which correspondingly immerses her into the whirl of grief.
Right here, we get a glimpse of how trauma maneuvers to intervene her life,
6 Bishop, Elizabeth. One Art: Letters. Ed. Robert Giroux. New York: Noonday Press, 1995.
intermingling past and present; trauma, as a demon deeply rooted in her heart, refuses to be exorcised:
A scream, the echo of a scream, hangs over that Nova Scotian village. No one hears it; it hangs there forever, a slight stain in those pure blue skies, skies that travelers compare to those of Switzerland, too dark, too blue, so that they seem to keep on darkening a little more around the horizon—or is it around the rims of the eyes?—the color of the cloud of bloom on the elm trees, the violet on the fields of oats; something darkening over the woods and waters as well as the sky. The scream hang like that, unheard, in memory—in the past, in the present, and those years between. It was not even loud to begin with, perhaps. It just came to live there,
forever—not loud, just alive forever. Its pitch would be the pitch of my village. (251)
Mother’s scream, the metaphor for inescapable insanity, suggests a home wherein a sense of belonging and safety are utterly devastated. Home is never a heart-warming place full of love, affection and tenderness; it is struck by a series of catastrophic events, torn into shatters and pieces.
Bishop was brought up by her grandmother for a while in Nova Scotia. Some of her poems will provide us with insight into her childhood life and experience.
Evidently, the loss of childhood has turned into a nightmare which leaves scars and fears inside her heart; Bishop said, “ I used to ask my Grandmother, when I said goodbye[ for school], to promise me not to die before I came home ” (One Art, 12). If the fear of loss has incarnated itself into a heart-wrenching trauma motivating Bishop to search for her home where she never feels complete and keeps aspiring for,
Bishop’s association with traveling and the question of belonging must reveal her subconscious motive to regard traveling as a method to acquire a sense of belonging.
Travel thus becomes a procedure for Bishop to process and negotiate with her feeling of loss, which I will focus on analyzing and interpreting in upcoming poems. Once plagued by anxiety and near-hysteria, Bishop confides to her friend, “ I get myself into a fine state of discouragement and panic, sleeplessness, nightmare, etc.—and why, I don’t really know…When I went to the hospital for five days I had not been
drinking so much, but I was afraid I was going to …I am exactly the age now at which my father died, which also might have something to do with it” (One Art, xiii).
Obviously, the childhood loss incarnates itself into a vampire which Bishop can’t get out of her mind.
As we can see from the previous information regarding Bishop’s childhood loss, the poet has been haunted by the dreadful sense of loss, which turns out to be an inerasable monster in mind. However, I argue traveling becomes a part of antidote to help Bishop cope with the sense of loss, which enables her to let go of the pain and trauma in life. In “One Art,” the poet describes how she has gone through the sense of loss by means of travel:
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, Some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster. (178)
In this poem, the poet experiences her own epiphany concerning the issue of loss as she utters, “ The art of losing isn’t too hard to master.” She gives us many examples to support the fact that explains how she has come to master the art of losing. And travel also plays an important role to bring forth her sense of understanding towards the
issue of loss. She says when you travel, you practice “ losing farther, losing faster.”
According to the poet, we experience loss as a traveler because we may probably experience losing “places, and names ” as we physically leave a traveling spot. As the traveler like Bishop arrives in a new place, this new place becomes a part of her life, memory and understanding of the world. That is why she assumes that she
experiences loss as she has to leave those places. In this sense, this traveler is always crossing the border and boundary, and she simultaneously experiences ownership of a place where she reaches and loss of a place where she has to depart. Therefore, she claims she loses “ two cities”, “ vaster realms” “ two rivers” and “ a continent”. In a sense, travel has an impact on how the poet has mastered “the art of losing.” Since travel is “ the negotiation not of familiar spaces, but of strange places” (Space and Place, xiv),7 the unfamiliar places contain curing effect on the poet who intends to find a sense of belonging through the act of traveling across the borderland. As the poet has proposed to question herself in this very poem, “ Should we have stayed at home, whenever that may be? ” (94), we are led to believe that the poet’s definition of home can never be found in one single place, but is a fantasy which has maximized the extension of home to include the world as a wonderland.
Finally, as we speak of loss in Bishop’s life, we can never ignore one of the greatest loses in her life—Maria Carlota Costellat de Macedo Soares ( Lota). On her journey to Brazil, Bishop comes to have an intimate relationship with Lota who has taken care of her materially and dedicated love and care to her mentally, which enable Bishop to really acquire a sense of stability, security and real home. Thus, in this stage of life, Bishop boldly looks back on her childhood trauma and loss by writing about
7 Carter, Erica, James Donald, and Judith Squires, eds. Space and Place: Theories of Identity and Location. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1993.
her mother’s insanity and her childhood time in Great Village. In addition to her childhood, poems concerning the Brazilian theme and her love addressed to Lota follow at this period of time. However, her lesbian relationship with Lota doesn’t bloom into a happy ending but ends in tragedy; Lota commits suicide due to
depression. While recalling her lifetime, Bishop describes Lota as the one who really gives her a sense of home and the years in Brazil with Lota as the happiest period of her life.
The reason why I tackle Bishop’s life and loss is to delve into the correlation between Bishop’s haunted sense of loss and her embarking on the task of traveling.
Traveling , I believe, is Bishop’s legacy of finding her lost self and to exorcise the pain and suffering along all the way; in my thesis, the theme of “transgression” has played a prominent role in shaping how I view Bishop’s poems. Here the theme of transgression will be defined as the traveler’s alternative way of perceiving, which goes beyond the surface of phenomena and provides readers with a new horizon of looking at things. In a sense the traveler not only transgresses the geographical restrictions of border and boundary physically, but also transgresses the ideological conventions mentally. Therefore, in the first chapter, I primarily focus on analyzing Bishop’s poems regarding childhood loss and travel. Travel is one major component in her poems dealing with my major emphasis on the theme of transgression inasmuch as traveling can be regarded as a method to help the traveler to escape from the world of confinement and marginality.
Trauma and Related Childhood Poetry
First of all, it is essential to realize the impact of loss and trauma on Bishop’s mind as we try to uncover the excruciating agony buried in Bishop’s childhood and its impact on her creativity. Working on linking trauma with ghosts, Cathy Caruth asserts
that the trauma sufferers are “ haunted” or “ possessed” by images and events that they have missed as experiences. Therefore, “ a trauma is violently imposed and is always reimposing itself”( 2~3). Accordingly, trauma can become an undercurrent lurking beneath the shadow of the victim’s psyche, and forces psyche to reorganize itself. It is a pain which is hardly to be remembered, but also impossible to be forgotten. Caruth finally concludes, “ A trauma is never….one’s own”( “Unclaimed Experience” 192). To support Caruth’s argument, Grubrich-Smitis explains that patients of trauma “ literally lived in a double reality” (302). Therefore, trauma possibly forces characters to search for a feasible reconciliation between their divided selves. For example, many marvelously literary works have tended to engage their major theme with the act of searching and traveling; intriguingly, behind this surface arrangement trauma has always functioned as the catalyst precipitating the story characters to take on the task of searching.
To investigate into the issue of trauma, I will employ Toni Morrison’s monumental works related to the theme of trauma and search to explicate the correlation between trauma and searching. In Beloved, for example, the excruciating agony of the traumatic past can’t be eliminated from Sethe’s mind; the guilt of infanticide is repressed, which can be accessible only indirectly. Therefore, the
inerasable trauma concretizes itself as Beloved, the baby ghost, who haunts and forces Sethe to confront the unspeakable and repressed pain buried inside secretly. In
addition, Beloved’s leave and return also ignite Sethe’s search, not only physically searching for Beloved but mentally searching back in time to negotiate the repressed trauma. In another of Morrison’s acclaimed novel , Song of Solomon, suffering and anguish also originate from the traumatic past. Parental conflicts bring forth family violence. Macon’s tragic childhood memory makes him feel like “ the outside, the
propertyless, landless wanderer” (27).8 Unfortunately, Macon repeats the tragedy of his suffering by inflicting violence on this family. In a deeper sense we figure out all homeless feelings come from traumatized past, which will never be eliminated successfully and will resurface by chance. All these absurd perversities surrounding family history pushes Milkman to leave, to escape, and to free himself from the fetters and burdens of “the Dead family”. In so doing, Milkman’s flight of travel can also be interpreted as a reaction against his homeless feelings, which come from a
traumatized family. Through Milkman’s flight, Milkman not only searches for his own identity, but accidentally finds the thread to his family ancestry.
From these previous examples, we can see trauma has a connection with the act of search. In Song of Solomon, trauma even initiates the act of travel to take on the search for identity. Using these examples to support my basis that argues trauma can be regarded as one of the main factor motivating Bishop to travel and to find her
“ home, ” I will now proceed to analyze Bishop’s poems, which draw heavily on the traumatic experiences of the past. The fragmented traces of Bishop’s childhood sorrow can be found in many of Bishop’s poems. More significantly, Bishop didn’t write these poems about tracing back to her traumatized childhood until she traveled to Brazil. From this recognition, we wonder although Brazil serves as an escape for her to leave the unhappy memory of Nova Scotia and Massachusetts behind, Brazil also functions to compel her to examine and look back on her childhood sorrow.
Based on Steve Gould Axelrod’s analysis, “ In Brazil, Bishop began to construct, for virtually the first time, literary texts that evoked scenes from her Nova Scotia past.
Her physical journey south initiated a parallel aesthetic journey north” (“ Elizabeth Bishop: Nova Scotia in Brazil” 279). Therefore, taking advantage of travel, she is empowered to confront her trauma.
8 Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York: Plume, 1987.
In her poem “ Sestina,” Bishop’s fragmented childhood identity can be
illuminated for understanding as I assume trauma as the inevitable factor leading this female sojourner to expatriate herself from her homeland, away from a place full of childhood sorrow:
September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove, reading the jokes from the almanac, laughing and talking to hide her tears.
She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,
It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears dance like mad on the hot black stove, the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother hangs up the clever almanac
on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child, hovers above the old grandmother and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.
The poem starts with the air of melancholy and depression as we seem to be able to feel the rhythm of the dropping rains falling down on the house roof. “ The failing light” ushers in the scene of the grandmother and child surrounded by a dark secret.
The grandmother seemingly endeavors to liven the atmosphere by reading “the jokes.” However, beneath the make-believe laughter and brightness, we know they share an unspeakable and heart-breaking secret. Instead of being the beacon lighting up the darkness, “ the jokes” make readers empathize with the deep anguish they have repressed intentionally.
The grandmother seems not the only one who knows the sorrow; actually everything seems to feel the sorrow, vibrating with the dropping tears. We sense “ the almanac,” “ the teakettle,” and “ the rain” are all impressively sensible as if they knew the sad secret hidden inside the family. While looking at the teakettle, the child seems to penetrate into the secret of sadness which her grandmother tries to hide. She sees the “ small hard tears” of the teakettle dancing madly, echoing with the madness of the rain outside. The sorrow and sadness are compressed into the existence of surrounding things, which are all driven to the degree of madness. The grandmother hangs up the almanac, which seems to shed tears simultaneously when the
grandmother’s teacup is full of “ dark brown tears.” This stanza finally ends with the grandmother’s “ shiver”, and we seem to feel the coldness of the house. Evidently, the sadness gives birth to madness, which finally leads to the lifelessness and coldness of the family atmosphere and human hearts.
In the following stanza, we will see much more contrast between the
make-believe happiness and the real, heart-chilly sorrow buried beneath the surface. It is worth pointing out that all the materials reflect the true emotion and state of the mind of the grandmother and the child even though the grandmother tries to pretend as if nothing happened:
It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house and a winding pathway. Then the child puts in a man with buttons like tears and shows it proudly to the grandmother.
But secretly, while the grandmother busies herself about the stove, the little moons fall down like tears from between the pages of the almanac into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.
Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove and the child draws another inscrutable house.
Now our attention centers around the child who pictures “a rigid house” and “ a winding pathway”. The images of a rigid house and winding pathway both indicate the feelings of alienation, loneliness, solitude, and remoteness. Could they imply the hidden secret inside the humans, but are denied to be recognized and spoken out?
When the child draws, the emotion of grief and coldness is grasped and manipulated into her painting, which also reveal those “buttons like tears.” Maybe the man inside the drawing suggests the destiny of the grandmother and child, overwhelmed by the grief but unable to share “ the tears” together. While interpreting the drawing of the man by the child, Ryan Lankford proposes that the child “unconsciously fills the space up with a man,” which implies the lack of father figure in her life (“ Bishop's Sestina ” 58). But the grandmother is reluctant to share the pain openly with the child.
The dark and brutal secret is better left unsaid.
Nevertheless, as the humans fail to communicate their true feelings with each other, the surrounding materials commiserate with their repressed anguish by sharing the grief. “The little moons” destroy the pretended warmth and happiness of the family embodied in “the flower bed” when they drop “like tears” into the flower bed.
At this moment, we realize no matter what the family do they can’t escape the fate of being enclosed by despair and sorrow. The grandmother insists on faking happiness by singing and the child keeps on drawing “another inscrutable house.” The word
“ inscrutable” suggests the detachment and inscrutableness of the adult world, which avoids facing the trauma honestly. However, the child seems to have insight into all the grief and sorrow deemed as unspeakable by her grandmother; she knows all this matter, but sharing the traumatic past with her grandmother is inaccessible to her.
All in all, the only thing she could do is keep on drawing her inscrutable family.
However, the grandmother will never be able to decode how her granddaughter feels inside. This poem describes the unspeakable and incommunicable trauma shared by the family, which plays a significant role in shaping the child’s consciousness. The child, knowing the whole matter, can only repress this part of grief as her
grandmother does. If this poem describes the epitome of the poet’s childhood trauma, searching and questing for the lost part will definitely influence her to take on the task
of journeying.
Moreover, as we consider the title of the poem, “ Sesitina,” which refers to a kind of poetic form. It occurs to us, “ why does the writer name this poem as
‘Sestina’?” Does it suggest any further implication behind the title? According to Lankford, “A sestina is a seven stanza poem with six lines in every stanza except for the last one, where they are only three”(57). In this sense sestina is a very rigid and formal structure, which stresses on the repetition of words, order and poetic form.
Consequently, we notice that Bishop’s “Sestina” has a formal verse of the sestina. It has six stanzas of six lines. And when we look at the last word in every line of the first and last stanza, we find they follow the same order as far as the use of words is concerned. For example, “house,” “tears,” “stove,” “ almanac,” “ child,” and
“grandmother” are used over and over again, and they follow the same pattern of repetition. But does this sestina form have anything to do with the poetic meaning that the writer intends to convey? Lankford further maintains that by using sestina as the basic form the poem “resists the emotions of the domestic scene that Bishop attempts”
(58). Since sestina is a very rigid structure which puts stress on a rigid form and controlled word repetition, the family emotion is also repressed and controlled by the grandmother so as to hide the sorrow and anguished emotions. In this sense, the sestina form corresponds to the controlled and repressed emotions of the grandmother who refuses to reveal her private emotions concerning the family trauma. Therefore, the sestina supports the coldness and unrevealed secret of sadness that the writer wants to convey in this very poem.
Besides, the poetic structure of the poem is discernibly based on a progressive structure. The repetition of words not only creates a repetitive sadness and coldness infiltrating the very house, but also reveals the progressive understanding of the child’s perspective towards the unspeakable sorrow. I assume the form of the poem
supports the fact how a child sees things. The progressive pattern of the poem which brings us to the understanding of the grief shared by the family also reveals the truth that a child intends to grasp a matter by rearranging things until it makes sense.
Therefore, the order and arrangement of the poetic form also suggest how the child’s progressive understanding and grasp of the family sorrow. Moreover, the prevalent images of the water circles also have something to do with the sestina form in my view, which is also based on a progressive pattern contributing to our realization of the family trauma. For instance, the evaporation of the boiling water reverberates with the precipitation of the rolling rains outside. And the “ brown tears” which fill up the teacup and “the little moons” which fall down the pages of the almanac both create images of the water circle. As a result, the poetic form, sestina, supports the repetitive
sadness and coldness of the family secret.
While the previous poem focuses on the unspeakable trauma shared by the family, the later poem is mainly concerned about the narrator’s witnessing the family tragedy, which constitutes the impressions of cold and inaccessible emotions,
indifferent attachment bonds, and the loneliness and solitude of the described subject.
In “ First Death in Nova Scotia,” the death of a cousin is immediately threatening to the integral identity of the child’s perceptive subjectivity, which is suffused by the icy and blistering coldness of the weather and human gap:
In the cold, cold parlor my mother laid out Arthur In the cold, cold parlor my mother laid out Arthur beneath the chromographs:
Edward, Prince of Wales, with Princess Alexandra,
and King George with Queen Mary.
Below them on the table stood a stuffed loon shot and stuffed by Uncle Arthur, Arthur's father.
Since Uncle Arthur fired a bullet into him,
he hadn't said a word.
He kept his own counsel on his white, frozen lake, the marble-topped table.
His breast was deep and white, cold and caressable;
his eyes were red glass, much to be desired. (125)
The poem begins with “ the cold, cold parlor”, which immediately gives birth to the atmospheric iciness and chilliness. It strikes us that something inauspicious has
happened. Later the gelid and sorrowful atmosphere escalates as we find the narrator’s mother is laying out Arthur “beneath the chromographs.” When speaking of the
“loon,” the narrator turns the loon into a victim-like figure because he is “ shot” and
“ stuffed.” As we can see, the death-like image of the loon reverberates with Arthur’s death. The loon is an incarnation of death, solitude, coldness and whiteness. However, he is also Arthur’s companion who shares the white and frozen lake and
marble-topped table with Arthur. The words offer us a feelings of unbridgeable gap between the family members. We don’t know exactly why Arthur is prematurely dead,
for the narrator offers no definite traces. He probably died of a disease. However, we are certain that the family relationship is as white as the “ frozen lake” and “ the marble-topped table”, which both exude the aura of iciness and distance. All these images of white lake, marble-topped table, Arthur, and the loon’s white breast all link us with the gelid sensation so deep and impenetrable presented in this very poem.
However, the narrator offers us an alternative viewpoint with regard to the vision. For example, the narrator suggests that the loon’s white breast was
“ caressable” and his red glass eyes were much to be “ desired.” In this sense the loon which is an embodiment of death turns out to be something not so horrifying, but tempting. Moreover, the loon can also be Arthur’s guardian angel who eyes his coffin.
Death itself in the gaze of the child is filled with ambiguity, for it is something that is both dreadful and desirable. Based on Axelrod’s analysis, the poem preserves itself intact by employing the “ uncomprehending gaze” of the child, regarding family members as “ strangers in a play” ( 288). Therefore, the uncomprehending child witnesses the funeral scene, but unable to figure out what death means to be. The loon’s breast turns out to be “ caressable” “ and its eyes are “ desired.”
Here the narrator implies death seems not nightmarish, but “caressable” and
“desirable,” which the narrator perceives to be both desirable and repulsive. Axelrod further interprets this phenomenon of the narrator’s perceiving as an reflection on the
“early, unsheltering home” of the poet (288). Since Arthur’s death creates the gelid air suggesting the coldness and distance felt by the poet concerning her “home”, the narrator comments Arthur’s corpse as caressable and desirable, which on the other hand implies the ideal and intact “home” is what the narrator longs for. Accordingly, Axelrod assumes that in this poem home becomes both desirable and repulsive, which positions itself in a precarious condition. Therefore, based on Axelrod’s research, I suggest that the loss of “home” during the poet’s childhood turns out to be the
graveyard of the poet’s psychological trauma which implies a wish of home never fulfilled, but this lack in childhood also propels her to make her itinerary the search for “ home.”
In the following paragraphs of the poem, the chilliness and whiteness of the glacial atmosphere will continue to escalate. The confusing gaze of the child poses a threat to the assumed life-after-death belief in which the dead returns back to the heaven immersed in bliss and serenity:
"Come," said my mother,
"Come and say good-bye to your little cousin Arthur."
I was lifted up and given one lily of the valley to put in Arthur's hand.
Arthur's coffin was a little frosted cake,
and the red-eyed loon eyed it from his white, frozen lake.
Arthur was very small.
He was all white, like a doll that hadn't been painted yet.
Jack Frost had started to paint him the way he always painted
the Maple Leaf (Forever).
He had just begun on his hair, a few red strokes, and then
Jack Frost had dropped the brush and left him white, forever.
The gracious royal couples were warm in red and ermine;
their feet were well wrapped up in the ladies' ermine trains.
They invited Arthur to be the smallest page at court.
But how could Arthur go, clutching his tiny lily,
with his eyes shut up so tight
and the roads deep in snow? (125~6).
The poem then continues with the narrator’s mother who lifts her up to let her pay farewell respect to Arthur. While the narrator puts the lily in Arthur’s hand, she
notices that his coffin appears as “ a little frosted cake.” Furthermore, at the beginning we observe the whole farewell funeral takes place in the parlor. But we later
encounter a confounding puzzle as the words describes the funeral scene of Arthur’s coffin being turned into a drama-like scene, “the red-eyed loon eyed it from his white, frozen lake.” In fact, I propose the narrator combines the funeral scene with chilliness and whiteness of the Nova Scotia landscape as a way to reflect the gelid family atmosphere. To support my argument, Axelrod also suggests that “ Nova Scotia landscape has invaded the home and its affectation, taking them over” ( 290). Indeed, the frosty family interaction is tantamount to the arctic and bleak landscape of Nova Scotia for the narrator.
Moreover, as the narrator continues that Arthur looks like all white as if
unpainted yet. Whiteness is intertwined with death and chilliness. The narrator keeps on saying that though “ Jack Frost” has painted many things he leaves most of Arthur white and unpainted. Here “ Jack Frost” not only suggests the conjuration of the powerful winter which is capable of changing the earthly beings into a vision of whiteness, but implies the colorless and phantomlike angel of death who claims Arthur’s life. In contrast to the pictures of the royal couples whose exuding grace, exaltation, warmth and exhilaration make us wonder if the world after death appears to be placid and suffused with heavenly aureoles, the departure of Arthur doesn’t seem quite graceful and noble as one “page in the court.” Instead, the final scene depicts the sense of desolation and bleakness not only in terms of the snow-covered solitary roads but in terms of human suspicion of the supposedly glamorous paradise after passing away as well.
For those who have speculated on the family’s relation with whiteness, iciness, death and solitude vividly depicted in this poem, we may also wonder why the
“ uncomprehending gaze” of the child plays a dramatic role in bringing the story to an end by promulgating more dubious questions as she finally describes that Arthur seems unable to leave the earthliness in peace, but “clutches his tiny lily, with his eyes shut up so tight.” I suggest the child narrator functions as an agent not only to reveal the frozen family atmosphere, but to challenge the adult belief and societal consensus, which regard the after-death journey as a way to ascend to the Godly heaven
permeated with light and peacefulness. Intriguingly, while reflecting on the childhood sorrow, the wondering and uncomprehending child narrator establishes herself as a neutral who hasn’t been mentally molded by social expectations or grown mature enough to repudiate the operation of social system for the sake of opposition. In this sense, the child’s gaze is neutral enough to look back on the childhood circumstances objectively and to induce readers to contemplate the perpetually working system
behind the adult-dominated hegemony. In a nutshell, if the childhood reminiscence demonstrates the poet’s retrospection, she has claimed herself as an early pioneer of social transgressor; moreover, due to the “lack” in the childhood, she embarks on traveling as a means not only to transgress preconception but also to pursue her ideal
“home.”
Home, travel and Transgression
In the previous part of this chapter, we delve into Bishop’s childhood sorrow and trauma so as to account for her personal quest through traveling. This lack in life apparently compels her to take on the task of traveling inasmuch as traveling emerges as a means to alienate oneself and to find bubbling colors of heterogeneous cultures intermingling but not exclusive. Through traveling, the traveler can refine her taste and dissolve the demarcating borders between two binary items, further exiling herself into the territory of in-betweenness, the ambiguousness and the composite.
Commenting on Bishop’s role as a self conscious traveler, Marilyn May Lombardi argues that “even though Bishop’s sexual preference alienated her from the marriage market, she nevertheless knew as a woman what it felt like to be on exhibition. For this reason, she might be expected to question the ethics of tourism with a greater urgency” (The Body and the Song 155). That is why Bishop intends to maintain a neutral perspective towards her traveling. For example, in her Questions of Travel the Brazilian landscape mainly functions as a means to initiate us into exploring the questions of travel instead of offering us answers directly. I think that is the reason why the traveler in Bishop’s works is filled with a force of transgressivity.
The traveler questions authority and challenges our usual and habitual way of looking at things and thinking about issues related to the very identity of being a traveler. To stress Bishop’s distinctive role as a self-aware traveler more clearly, I will
employ Robert J. C. Young’s remark to explicate Bishop’s position as an “ outsider”
when she ventures upon an exotic location:
Today’s self-proclaimed mobile and multiple identities may be a marker not of contemporary social fluidity and dispossession but of a new stability, self-assurance and quietism . Fixity of identity is only sought in situations of instability and disruption, of conflict and change.( Young, 1995:4)
On the one hand, as Bishop changes from location to location on the way of her traveling, she produces multiple identities. However, when she renews her journey and begins to aim at reaching a new destination, she is also searching for her “ fixity of identity,” her ideal home as she has questioned herself, “Should we have stayed at home, wherever that may be?” Based on the previous literature on Bishop as a self conscious traveler who always questions herself constantly, her poetic art thus reveals a tremendous capacity to transgress against the authoritative voice and ideological control. According to Shira Wolosky, Bishop’s travel scenes in her art “ take place as specific social-historical encounters and features a surprising variety of human figures within varying cultural contexts.” By so doing, Bishop can manipulate perspectives, which “ shift radically within a text” ( “Representing Other Voices” 5). Based on Wolosky’s analysis on Bishop’s poetic strategies, in the second part of my investigation into Bishop’s role as a traveler combined with her aesthetic of transgression, her traveler identity will be highlighted in how Bishop as a traveler intends to transgress against the socially dominant voices so as to acquire a
profoundly new perspective which facilitates a better understanding and appreciation towards the worldly phenomena.
After investigating Bishop’s position as a travel writer, in the final part of this chapter I want to look at the way in which Bishop has appropriated herself as a
traveler who explores the line between reality and imagination, nature and culture, home and travel, and subjection and domination. Moreover, as we walk into the world of her traveling poems, my focus on transgression concerning her poems will be more specifically emphasized. First of all, the traveler’s non-involved gaze and the theme of transgression are closely linked as we savor her poem, “Squatter’s Children”( 95):
On the unbreathing sides of hills they play, a specklike girl and boy, alone, but near a specklike house.
The Sun's suspended eye
blinks casually, and then they wade gigantic waves of light and shade.
A dancing yellow spot, a pup, attends them. Clouds are piling up;
a storm piles up behind the house.
The children play at digging holes.
The ground is hard; they try to use one of their father's tools,
a mattock with a broken haft the two of them can scarcely lift.
It drops and clangs. Their laughter spreads effulgence in the thunderheads,
Intriguingly, the story begins with the “ gaze” of the narrator who sights two children playing in the far distance. Compared with the imposing view of the natural scenery, they are “ specklike” and the pup becomes “a dancing yellow.” Here the narrator
describes a vision in which nature grows more and more aggressive and intimidating as “ the unbreathing sides of hills,” “ the sun’s suspended eye,” and “ piling clouds”
all appear to be threatening to the slightness of the children and pup. The narrator keeps on describing that the piling storm grows large enough to nearly besiege the house. Unaware of the threatening weather which can endanger their lives, the children are engrossed with their game. Furthermore, as the narrator claims the children can hardly lift the “mattock with a broken haft,” we can’t help but feel worried about the feebleness of the children who are soon under the intimidation of the menacing thunderstorm. But the children who remain unaware of the storm keep on with their game and their laughing disperses “ effulgence in the thunderheads.”
Obviously, the laughter of the children makes readers empathize with their innocence when the children become so infatuated with their moment of happiness and disregard the “danger” lurking behind.
In the later part of the poem, the children's happy obliviousness to the oncoming storm will be broken as the ruthless rolls of thunder overwhelm “the puppy’s bark” and “ little, soluble , unwarrantable ark:”
Weak flashes of inquiry direct as is the puppy's bark.
But to their little, soluble, unwarrantable ark, apparently the rain's reply consists of echolalia,
and Mother's voice, ugly as sin, keeps calling to them to come in.
Children, the threshold of the storm
has slid beneath your muddy shoes;
wet and beguiled, you stand among the mansions you may choose out of a bigger house than yours, whose lawfulness endures.
It's soggy documents retain
your rights in rooms of falling rain.
As all the voices are overcome by the heavy rain, the thunderous “echolalia ,”
sounds like “ Mother’s voice,” which keeps calling them to find a shelter. Right here the stormy rains which sounds like “ echolalia” and “ Mother’s voice” are all
intimidating to the subjectivity of the children. Apparently, we realize the children are thrust into a dilemma in which they either have to succumb to the thundering
rain or Mother’s voice which is “ ugly as sin.” The thundering rain which is powerfully threatening to the children sounds like “ Mother’s voice,” which also implies that nature is transformed into a Medusa-like Mother figure who can pose a menace to the integrity of the children. Hence, the children are paralyzed to acquire self-control. The children who are thought to be in the prime age of innocence are immediately under a variety of menacing circumstances, which also suggests that not only the environmental disaster but the symbolic order of the adult world always operates by control and repression, by thwarting the children’s self-autonomy.
Finally, the narrator describes that the children are all “wet and beguiled” in the storm. The mansions that the children can choose from to hide themselves are described as a “bigger house.” Besides, the house also gives us a sensation that it can protect the children from the encroaching storm. But actually the mansion is unstable because its “soggy” documents are supposed to be invaded by the “ falling rain” as well. As it turns out, the children can hardly escape the intimidating impact of the rain
no matter where they go and whatever they resort to. The theme of transgression is revealed in this very poem when the observer of the phenomenon seemingly stands outside the terrain of influence. The traveler provides us insight into the situation in which the children become stuck. On the one hand, nature functions as an
intimidating force which can heavily jeopardize the security of the children. On the other hand, the mansion which could represent itself as a social legal system offers no shelter for the endangered children who may be engulfed by the upcoming storm.
Therefore, the ambivalent circumstance in which the children become enmeshed suggests that a secure place for the children is utterly denied. In fact, this narrator is a traveler who positions herself as an outsider by casting a neutral perspective on everything. Most significantly, it is right from here; the power of traveler as a
transgressor could be overseen. The traveler seems to have a better understanding of the children’s predicament, and she can also discern the unacknowledged position of the mother figure presented in this poem.
Besides, it is also significant for us to ponder the very position of many social misfits revealed inside. The squatters implicitly refer to the parents’ illegal identity.
As we can see, the children intend to use their father’s tool. The tool is “ a mattock with a broken haft.” Besides, the children can hardly lift the mattock up. The mattock with its broken haft suggests that it is useless for digging holes. This point implicitly indicates that the Father figure is a social misfit whose tool is rendered useless when confronted against the natural threat. And he can’t provide the children with enough security because the children can barely lift the broken mattock. Moreover, according to Shira Wolosky, the mother figure reveals the “distressed voice” regarding her vulnerability. She is “protective, yet ineffective, having little shelter to offer, compulsive, intruding into the child’s world.” Most importantly, Wolosky also suggests the phrase, “ ugly as sin,” in the poem tends to reflect the poet’s sympathy
for the maternal role who is “ caught in the social thunderstorms of poverty and homelessness not of her own making” (8).9 Therefore, the poverty, scarcity and invulnerability of the maternal figure proves herself as an illegal resident whose poverty and scarcity make the society reject to her. The lack of the father figure and the intruding of mother figure makes the theme of transgression more penetrating, and the Mother figure who is cast into a state of ambiguity can be both threatening and protective of the integrity of the children. Furthermore, the children can also be deemed as social misfits as we consider they are the offspring of illegal residents. If the mansion with its “ lawfulness” represent itself as a social legitimacy which possesses the right to accommodate or deny any individual, the children as the
offspring of the illegal squatters are the illegal residents as well. From this perspective, the mansion with its “ rooms of falling rain” can make the documents become
“ soggy.” This also suggests that the children’s security will be endangered even if they are sheltered by the mansion, which offers no substantial protection for the
children. In this sense, their statuses are also denied by the society like their parents.
The following poem may not be explicitly linked with a traveler figure in the story. However, as we consider the fact that mostly a traveler would pay much more attention to the map, we realize the reflection on the map also suggests that the narrator’s implicit identity as a traveler provides us with an alternative viewpoint towards observing and interpreting the map, which is the inherent theme of
transgression associated with the perceptive and imaginative capability of the narrator.
In this poem, Bishop roams between the realms of reality and imagination, which allow reader to glimpse into the liberal mindset of the traveler. “The Map” (3) is representative of Bishop herself who is always eager to give her audience a new route
9 Wolosky, Shira. “ Representing Other Voices: Rhetorical Perspective in Elizabeth Bishop.” Style 29.1 (Spring 1995): 1-17.
of perceiving and of understanding people and places on the earth’s surface:
Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.
Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.
Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under, drawing it unperturbed around itself?
Along the fine tan sandy shelf
is the land tugging at the sea from under?
As the story begins, we see the narrator is observing the map meticulously. The lap between the land and sea is described carefully, including the observation of the ledge colors. Nevertheless, after this intriguing observation, the narrator immediately poses a question by asking if the land leans itself down so as to “lift the sea from under” or if the land “tugs at the sea from under?” Considering from the first proposal, we envision the sea and land coexist peacefully inasmuch as the land can take a step back by drawing around itself. In this state, neither the land nor the sea is offended or perturbed. I think the narrator poses many questions concerning the mapped landscape for us because she wants us to think about the very issue of reality. Does truth only exist in one form of reality or can be shown in many ways? Surely, the answer to the question remains a mystery for the audience to contemplate independently.
The narrator leaves us with an open question without forcing an answer upon us.
And the second proposal imagines the sea and the land are wrestling in a tug of war because the land has to “tug” the sea. While savoring this supposition, we can’t help wondering if this truly reflects the condition of the sea and land, the land must bear tremendous pressure because the land has to tug at the sea from under. Their coexistence may be conflicting all the time; no wonder we have so many earthquakes.
Bishop leaves these questions for readers to participate in and find answers by themselves:
The shadow of Newfoundland lies flat and still.
Labrador's yellow, where the moony Eskimo has oiled it. We can stroke these lovely bays, under a glass as if they were expected to blossom, or as if to provide a clean cage for invisible fish.
The names of seashore towns run out to sea, the names of cities cross the neighboring mountains
—the printer here experiencing the same excitement as when emotion too far exceeds its cause.
These peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods.
In the second paragraph, we witness the astonishingly imaginative capacity of Bishop, who thrusts the geographical landscape and seascape into a fascinating and
exhilarating kaleidoscope through which the audience can peer into the world of magic and amazement. Newfoundland turns out to be “ Labrador’s yellow” oiled by Eskimo. Moreover, the narrator further comments a funny remark as she says that those bays which are breathed into life can be put under a glass for viewing or can be utilized as “a clean cage for invisible fish.” Afterwards, the poet promulgates that the printer must have experienced the emotional excitement of going back and forth when it printed the names of cities and seashores.
From these two examples, the poet animates the landscape features by envisioning their potentialities to rise out of rigidity and stability as if enchanted. In the end, the peninsulas can even “take the water between thumb and finger.” We imagine the smoothness of the sea can be caressed by the peninsulas as if “yard
goods.” In the narrator’s imagination, we see the map in an intriguing way, which keeps unfolding new terrain of surprise and excitement. The narrator breathes life into the geography, which turns the boring reality into a thrilling roller coaster taking readers ups and downs. In a nutshell, the narrator reminds us that we can ride our imagination by replacing reality scenarios with the magic of fantasy. In this sense we feel the mind of the narrator is free and boundless. The narrator, based on Bishop’s knowledge, knows that realities are literally constructed in our imagination towards imagined places and landscapes.
In the last paragraph of the poem, the narrator makes a very interesting conclusion as she thinks about the demarcating line between reality and imagination:
Mapped waters are more quiet than the land is, lending the land their waves' own conformation:
and Norway's hare runs south in agitation, profiles investigate the sea, where land is.
Are they assigned, or can the countries pick their colors?
—What suits the character or the native waters best.
Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West.
More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.
As the poem proceeds, the narrator proclaims that “mapped waters” appear to be more placid than the land is. At first, we are puzzled because both mapped waters and the land are concrete formulations on the map; so how could this be? Then we realize on the map the waves of the waters have concretized “conformation,” which deprives the waves of their diversity, mobility and multiplicity demonstrated by real waters. The map can’t breathe life into the waves stamped on it; therefore, the sea waves which are supposed to be moving and rolling turn out to be even more monotonous. Finally, the narrator wonders if the colors of mapped countries are assigned or can be
determined by themselves? Which color will suit the details of the character and waters most appropriately? In conclusion, the narrator asserts that the map-makers’
colors are more delicate and imaginative than the historians’ description.
After these wonderings, the narrator’s conclusion apparently prioritizes the superiority of imagination over the reality. Since historians always have to measure and mold everything according to certain regulated rules, historians can never appreciate the power of saccharine fantasy. By contrast, a map-maker can determine the colors of various landscapes without adhering to rules or restrictions. They are stepping into the kingdom of dream and freedom, privileged to make the best of their fantasy. As we can obviously see, this poem is fraught with the ideology of
transgression because the narrator overturns our perspective towards the mapped landscape by stressing the tremendous capacity of imagination involved in the making of the map.
The narrator refuses to be pinned down under the formality of one single reality. Bishop, as a traveler, knows how significant a perceptive and imaginative mind shapes our understanding towards the worldly phenomena. And the power of transgression derives itself from our very sense of curiosity and imagination, which emancipate us from the shackles of absolute sovereignty. Perhaps what the narrator wants to convey to the audience is not to take everything for granted and to use our imagination to see the world; in this sense everything will be tinted by a different light.
This also reflects the poet’s identity as a traveler who not only tries to transgress the geographical border and boundary physically, but ideological limitation and
restriction as well. And what the poet intends to imply in this poem seems to be the very fact that we shouldn’t waste away our capacity to imagine and fantasize if we wants to be qualified travelers. Since the map is a necessity to every traveler, the traveler in this very poem unfolds another vision for us to see the map and its
